Maduro releases twenty prisoners | C & # 39; was mediated …

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has ordered the release of Judge María Afiuni, who has been detained since 2009, and 19 other people arrested during protests against the government, the Venezuelan ambbadador to the Human Rights Council announced today. of the United Nations, Jorge Valero. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, had asked President Maduro to release several people, including the judge and the protesters.

Bachelet had told the press not long ago that he was going to release 22 people, including the Chilo-Venezuelan judge and journalist Braulio Jatar, arrested in 2016 for money laundering. Valero added that the release included a group of youths arrested during demonstrations, whose names were not detailed. In addition, he said that on July 2 also, thanks to the mediation of Bachelet, the release and expulsion of a group of 59 Colombians arrested since 2016 had been obtained.

Afiuni was arrested in 2009 and jailed on the orders of former President Hugo Chávez, who had criticized one of his sentences against businessman Eligio Cedeno, accused of corruption. Since 2011, she was under house arrest after reporting rape in prison without medical badistance. Afiuni was sentenced in March to five years in prison for "spiritual corruption", six years after being released on parole in a case that had great international repercussions.

Ambbadador Valero stressed that only those who had committed minor crimes were released, that is, "not for abominable crimes such as burning people, destroying public property or killing civil servants." of "public order", but did not specify whether they had obtained full freedom or under protective measures.